6 ms·

i think you are right that the social web will not monetize as well as search. btw - foursquare's VP Revenue hire was its first, not a new one.

aresant 14y ago
Edited, thanks for the note -
qeorge 14y ago
Of course not - with search ads the consumers and the advertisers interests are aligned. The ads add value. With social the ads are always a distraction. At best its serendipitous. Its the difference between selling vegetables at a farmers market vs a roadside stand. No matter how pretty the stand it will never beat the market full of customers who came there to buy.
- Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
  Not sure about that. A social network can collect a huge amount of information about a user and in the future with better algorithms offer very valuable ads. Helping the user to keep up with fashion, tech, etc. To keep your analogy, Facebook to Google may be like TV advertisement to a local market.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    read up on the datawarehouse trend 10 yrs ago, you have to remain a viable company in order to take advantage of that stuff. turns out it's expensive and time-consuming to create value from generally-unstructured historical data even if you have an identity (or even just a demographic) attached to it.
    - Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
      Facebook has money and time. Plus a few hundred of the very best engineers in the valley, that joined pre-IPO.
      - rhizome 14y ago
        These are engineering problems that are capital-h Hard, well beyond the level of graph theory they're using now.
        Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
        You can take any complex web site or app and say it has functions beyond some math theory. But just hacking around is often enough for a good enough solution.
        rhizome 14y ago
        Why do you think FB, Amazon, or whoever don't have better recommendation/targeting algorithms than they have now if the solution was "just hacking around enough?" Not enough "enough?"
  - robryan 14y ago
    CPC on Facebook is fairly strong, the issue is CTR. Facebook is having to show an ad many more times to get a click. From an ecommerce perspective I the difference in effectiveness is massive. I have found it very hard to really generate a lot of spending intent across the ads, retargeting, sponsored stories and offers. Whereas a good Adwords campaign across a large product inventory pretty much prints money and annoys users a lot less.

aresant 14y ago

Edited, thanks for the note -

qeorge 14y ago

Of course not - with search ads the consumers and the advertisers interests are aligned. The ads add value. With social the ads are always a distraction. At best its serendipitous. Its the difference between selling vegetables at a farmers market vs a roadside stand. No matter how pretty the stand it will never beat the market full of customers who came there to buy.

Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
Not sure about that. A social network can collect a huge amount of information about a user and in the future with better algorithms offer very valuable ads. Helping the user to keep up with fashion, tech, etc. To keep your analogy, Facebook to Google may be like TV advertisement to a local market.
- rhizome 14y ago
  read up on the datawarehouse trend 10 yrs ago, you have to remain a viable company in order to take advantage of that stuff. turns out it's expensive and time-consuming to create value from generally-unstructured historical data even if you have an identity (or even just a demographic) attached to it.
  - Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
    Facebook has money and time. Plus a few hundred of the very best engineers in the valley, that joined pre-IPO.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      These are engineering problems that are capital-h Hard, well beyond the level of graph theory they're using now.
      - Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
        You can take any complex web site or app and say it has functions beyond some math theory. But just hacking around is often enough for a good enough solution.
        rhizome 14y ago
        Why do you think FB, Amazon, or whoever don't have better recommendation/targeting algorithms than they have now if the solution was "just hacking around enough?" Not enough "enough?"
- robryan 14y ago
  CPC on Facebook is fairly strong, the issue is CTR. Facebook is having to show an ad many more times to get a click. From an ecommerce perspective I the difference in effectiveness is massive. I have found it very hard to really generate a lot of spending intent across the ads, retargeting, sponsored stories and offers. Whereas a good Adwords campaign across a large product inventory pretty much prints money and annoys users a lot less.